It was a February Afternoon

 I remember I was with my sister that day. We were busily cutting out doilies and red paper hearts for a Valentine exchange later that week. My dad was blowing his nose, tired out by a head cold that had hit him hard, and my mom was watching the local news. It was a normal, average, safe, comfortable day in my normal, average, safe, comfortable life. But it was the last day I spent as a little girl.

Growing up, everyone I knew played the piano, and I had never been anxious to be the same as everybody else, even at a young age. I always had just the smallest bit of a contrary streak, and I wanted to be unique and individual. I decided to learn the violin. However, shortly after I procured an instrument via doting grandparents, and began lessons, I discovered that I had little talent. From then on the only time I truly enjoyed playing was the golden hour spent on Tuesday afternoons taking lessons in my teacher’s music room. There, Angela and her crooked smile would always encourage me that somehow my fingers, eyes, brain and soul could all reach just the right combination and create something beautiful, no matter how often I failed.  Angela was like that.

So, on that February day, my mom called me out into the living room. With tears in her eyes, she told me that Angela had been killed by a drunk driver.

I remember feeling numb at first, almost indifferent. There was a moment, a small, quiet moment in my heart where I felt saddened, regretful and sympathetic, just like I had with every other death that I’d ever experienced, before it struck me that this was something different. This wasn’t a distant acquaintance or faraway relative. This was a friend that I had known and loved, and after that first moment passed, I realized what it cost me to know that I was never going to hear her voice again.

I grew up in a conservative, Christian household. The only time my parents drank anything stronger than Mountain Dew was Thanksgiving Day. Even then, all they had was a half-glass of wine. The idea of a drunk person getting into a car and killing another human being was absolutely foreign to me, a sheltered young girl who knew little of death and even less of law-breaking. The news of Angela’s accident hit me like a wall. Everything I had known up to that point seemed vague, fuzzy, and far away.

From then on, I began to notice differences between me and my peers. I felt continually unsettled and disjointed whenever I spent time with friends, and at first I couldn’t understand the sudden shift. Gradually I realized that the change wasn’t in them, but rather in me. I had grown up. Most of my friends were still bound in the safe world of innocent childhood. But for me, everything had changed that February day.

Angela was twenty-six years old when she died. She was married. She had three little dogs, and a hive of students who adored her. She loved God very much. After seven years, I can no longer remember the details of her face, only blurry outlines, but I haven’t forgotten her golden blond hair that curled crazily, or her crooked teeth which rarely hid behind her lips. Angela never let little imperfections stop her from smiling.

After she died, reality scared me. The idea that other people I loved might die too, scared me. But that’s the world: bad things do happen. People get sick, grow old, let you down, and leave you. As a child I was sheltered from such things, but growing up means dealing with them, and learning to smile anyway. Through Angela I learned that life is full of imperfections, but you cannot let that stop you from living.